How Many Sessions to climb a boulder at your Max grade?

I know this is pretty subjective, but I'm fairly new to outdoor climbing and curious to see what people are aiming for when projecting at their limit

My problem with projecting at my limit, be it boulder,trad, or sport, is the severe case of ADHD that sets in after the 6th or so attempt. By then if I can't get it with a few more tries, I tend to lose interest.

One thousand one hundred and forty eight

https://youtu.be/GUhUgBxF5AQ?feature=shared

take TAKE wrote:

One thousand one hundred and forty eight

https://youtu.be/GUhUgBxF5AQ?feature=shared

Worth the watch, thanks for sharing! 

Not that many, from a weak guy perspective.

If I can hang onto the thing, and make some of the moves, my time from 1st try to send is usually from 2-5 tries.

With a little sessioning and beta from others, if I’m missing something major, maybe 7 tries.

As a weak guy, I’ve either got a chance or I can’t get off the starting move. There’s not a lot that weeks of work will change.

This is dramatically different than sport or trad, where each boulder problem between clips needs wired, the clips themselves, the gear placements, and all of it while dealing with endurance. My hardest redpoint was getting probably 50-70 tries over a few months. 

My hardest sport routes were sent in about 10 attempts over 5 sessions. I did put more work into an unsent project. Probably 16 attempts over 10 sessions.

My hardest boulder took many attempts over 7 sessions. It was kind of a long boulder problem and I didn't figure out my final beta until the second to last session.

It's more important if the boulder is in my style or not. In my style, with good beta, max grade could go within 4 sessions... anti style, or a reach/span/height issue making the crux harder for me, then boulders 1-2 grades below my max could take many sessions or just not go at all. 

For me it depends on the style.  An overhanging boulder with long reaches but on fairly good holds at the same grade of a boulder that's just nothing for holds and very, very subtle will go down much faster than a slab where staying close and great high-step hip flexibility is necessary.  Not surprisingly, the style that I like the most and find the most enjoyable, I'm willing to put way more tries into in order to snag a send.  

Question. Do you consider working out the beta a “try,” or are attempts/tries limited to actually going for the clean send. Because, if working something at my limit, I’ve at times spent literally dozens of attempts just trying to get workable beta down. 

From my personal experience with the grade of v8, anywhere from 1 to 12 sessions (both in the same season). Session count is an interesting stat can be very misleading, things like style, beta, tactics, and climbing with other people can affect it the point of almost being meaningless.

10 sessions is my self-imposed limit. I've only hit it once.

Frank Stein wrote:

Question. Do you consider working out the beta a “try,” or are attempts/tries limited to actually going for the clean send. Because, if working something at my limit, I’ve at times spent literally dozens of attempts just trying to get workable beta down. 

Definitely, I've spent multiple sessions just working out beta.

I spent a year and a half on one FA project, probably at least 100 sessions before finally succeeding. To be fair I didn’t make it out every week and there were breaks of several weeks scattered throughout. In retrospect I spent way too long trying to force beta that just didn’t work. I’ve worked other projects for several months before finally piecing together the sequences for the send.

Joel Thompson wrote:

I spent a year and a half on one FA project, probably at least 100 sessions before finally succeeding. To be fair I didn’t make it out every week and there were breaks of several weeks scattered throughout. In retrospect I spent way too long trying to force beta that just didn’t work. I’ve worked other projects for several months before finally piecing together the sequences for the send.

Please tell me that your FA that took 100 sessions wasn’t here; https://www.mountainproject.com/area/118726977/lake-palo-duro

That would be a lot of $5 donations to develop what looks like heinous choss.

The rock quality is what it is. Some chossy and some really good. Is this a 3 or 4 star area? Certainly not but most importantly it’s close to home in the flattest part of the whole U.S. and I feel pretty fortunate to have a place to climb with more projects than I’ll ever be able to finish. FWIW I didn’t break a single hold on this particular project over the course of all those attempts. Also FWIW one can purchase a season pass for 50 bucks that’s good for one year.

Joel Thompson wrote:

The rock quality is what it is. Some chossy and some really good. Is this a 3 or 4 star area? Certainly not but most importantly it’s close to home in the flattest part of the whole U.S. and I feel pretty fortunate to have a place to climb with more projects than I’ll ever be able to finish. FWIW I didn’t break a single hold on this particular project over the course of all those attempts. Also FWIW one can purchase a season pass for 50 bucks that’s good for one year.

I think it’s rad you put in the time to develop an area like that. 

Just finished up a my hardest yet yesterday.

Found the boulder last Nov, FA'd the stand start Dec. Spent two months working it consistently until it was just too much. Took the winter/spring to develop a neighboring, totally new, crag and get stronger. Summer is, of course, a total no-go in SC. Came back this season, put maybe four sessions on it with a brand new headspace, and sent it pretty quick. Certainly had to learn how to try hard, and the beta had quite a few big developments over the months. First time I've really trained anything was for this one route, as it has the hardest individual moves of anything I've done- 3 moves before a jug haul top out, and moving the start one hold/one move down turned the V5 stand into a V9ish. 

TLDR: First found the boulder 13 months ago, worked on it 3x per week for 2 months (including other routes), then tried it and got shut down couple times a month in the spring. Climbed multiple other routes of the same grade in that time. Came back this last month and sent it after 4 sessions. Maybe 30 sessions total over a year.

In the Rock Climbers Training Manual the Anderson brothers make the case that you should most often be focusing on climbs that take 1-4 sessions to complete since they will be hard enough to stimulate growth but not so hard that you end up hyper focused on them at the detriment of your overall fitness. I think that's a good approach generally.

I recently climbed my two hardest V grade routes thus far: Call of the Unknown (V9+) and Apple Bottom Jeans (V10). Call took me 10+ sessions over a 2 year period and ABJ took me 3 sessions over a 1 week period. I think that the disparity can be explained in a few ways, ABJ is more similar to the board climbs that I frequently train on, I started projecting Call when I was less fit and sent both routes at roughly the same level of fitness, also ABJ is in Joes which for me is generally a little softer than Oregon.

It’s of my opinion that it it’s at your actual limit it could, and likely should, usually take multiple seasons. Not sessions, but seasons. By definition a ‘limit‘ boulder should be, well, at your limit. Limit boulders for me (at the gym primarily) involve climbs where each individual move usually takes at least a full session (or four) just to do consistently. Putting the entire climb together can often take multiple seasons or years. This is also strictly from a training perspective. Outdoors I hardly project climbs where I can do no moves initially as this is mostly due to time and travel constraints.

As Andrew added above me, I think a good rule of thumb is to focus a large chunk of time on the climbs that take 1-4 sessions to send and treat the, as mini projects. 

Frank Stein wrote:

Question. Do you consider working out the beta a “try,” or are attempts/tries limited to actually going for the clean send. Because, if working something at my limit, I’ve at times spent literally dozens of attempts just trying to get workable beta down. 

Definitely. Anytime you touch the rock and attempt the move is a “try”, even if you are just trying the mid-way crux sequence, instead of starting from the beginning.

It can get tricky on the boulders to keep track of all “tries”. For example, if I attempted to start the midway move, dry-fired without even making the move, and immediately restarted, I tend to think of it as one try, not two. Each attempt between stepping away from the rock to rest, or let someone else we take a go, counts as one in my mind…

So, unless it was a flash or 2nd-/3-rd go send, each time starting from the start, people tend to stop counting attempts, and start counting days.

The “ranking” for bouldering might be:

flash

2nd go

3rd go

Sent in a day

Took 2 days

Took 3 days, etc  

Outdoors the longest-trying boulder send for me was 3 days. I tend to not boulder outdoor much these days, and don’t project boulders outdoors that take more then a day.

On routes the attempts are more easily defined (every time you tie in and step off the ground is an attempt, it ends when you lower off and untie, whether you reached the top or not).

My hardest route took 68 attempts in 27 days over 5 years. Yes, I kept track. And yes, that’s a lot. 

Lena chita wrote:

Definitely. Anytime you touch the rock and attempt the move is a “try”, even if you are just trying the mid-way crux sequence, instead of starting from the beginning.

It can get tricky on the boulders to keep track of all “tries”. For example, if I attempted to start the midway move, dry-fired without even making the move, and immediately restarted, I tend to think of it as one try, not two. Each attempt between stepping away from the rock to rest, or let someone else we take a go, counts as one in my mind…

So, unless it was a flash or 2nd-/3-rd go send, each time starting from the start, people tend to stop counting attempts, and start counting days.

The “ranking” for bouldering might be:

flash

2nd go

3rd go

Sent in a day

Took 2 days

Took 3 days, etc  

Outdoors the longest-trying boulder send for me was 3 days. I tend to not boulder outdoor much these days, and don’t project boulders outdoors that take more then a day.

On routes the attempts are more easily defined (every time you tie in and step off the ground is an attempt, it ends when you lower off and untie, whether you reached the top or not).

My hardest route took 68 attempts in 27 days over 5 years. Yes, I kept track. And yes, that’s a lot. 

 

I share the same sort of ”recording“ methodology, though I’m more lenient on what a ”try” is.